Even when a fanbase seems to be demanding something, that doesn’t always mean it will connect with the general public.
Ben Stiller learned that lesson when Zoolander 2, which was released in 2016, flopped with critics and at the box office. That reportedly blindsided the actor and filmmaker, which eventually allowed him to shake up his entire process. As reported by People, Stiller appeared on David Duchovny’s upcoming podcast, Fail Better, and shared the experience.
“I thought everybody wanted this,” said Stiller. “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really fucked this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews. It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’ What scared me the most on that one was I’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself…on Zoolander 2, it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”
“The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said ‘Make Zoolander 3 right now,’ or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that,” Stiller said. “But I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on — not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop.”
He continues, “Even if somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you go do another comedy or do this?’ I probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn’t want to. Finding yourself in terms of what creatively you want to be and do, I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies that since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of like the next, like, nine or ten months, I was able to develop these limited series.”
The second season of Severance recently completed production. While we await its premiere, head on over to @FlickeringMyth to let us know what you made of Zoolander 2…
